Five questions to ask any web or marketing vendor

Ask every web or marketing vendor the same five questions, out loud, before they get a dollar. A real vendor answers all five in plain words and will put the answers in writing. If they dodge two of the five, walk. The dodge is your answer.

Phone and truck. These are questions you ask out loud. You do not need a login or a laptop for any of it. The one before-you-call check below happens on your phone. Nothing on this page adds a meeting to your week.

Burned owners wrote this list

One owner paid a firm $400 a month for 8 months — $3,200 — and got five calls from his website. Here is the part of that story that actually matters. Eight slow months is not proof of a con by itself: a new website does not ring the day it goes live, and real rankings take months to build. An honest vendor says that to your face before you sign, and names the work you are paying for while it ramps. What made this owner's $3,200 a burn is that nothing was ever named — he had no way to check whether month eight was a slow honest climb or money down a hole.

Another owner, posting on a small-business forum, put the fix as a demand: if the service is as good as the pitch, you should never be forced into a long-term contract before seeing real results.

That is what these five questions are for. They do not test whether a vendor works fast. They test whether you will ever be able to tell — before any money moves.

What burned owners kept writing, pulled together:

prove it before asking for commitment
a plain, published price
no lock-in, and the walk-away terms in the contract
you own the site, the domain, the phone number, and the reviews, in writing
a named human who answers
reports in calls and jobs, never impressions

The five questions below are those demands, turned into words you can say on a phone call. There is nothing rude about asking them. Careful operators ask them every time. The people who wrote this list learned them the expensive way.

You already run this filter on subs

Before you put a sub on your job, you check his license, you check his insurance, you look at his last job, and you get the number in writing. You do not apologize for any of that.

This is the same check pointed at a different trade. With a sub you have known ten years, a handshake can carry real weight. With a stranger selling marketing, the paper is the whole relationship. If an answer is not in writing, treat it as not given.

The 30-second check: look them up first

Before you even return the call, look the company up on your phone. You are not checking whether they rank high on Google. Position is not the test.

What you are checking is simpler: can they be checked at all? A real vendor leaves a trail — a site that says who they are, people with names, work you can go look at. No site, no names, no work: that is the fail. Not "they rank poorly" — "nothing about them can be verified," which makes every question on this page unanswerable before you start.

The step: google the company name plus their city. (Screen work counts as yours here — it's one search on the phone in your hand.)

Checkable result: you found who they are — a real company, actual people, work you can look at — or you found a ghost. Plenty come back muddier than either: same name in two states, stock photos, no human name on the site. Muddy is not a ghost and it is not a pass. Ask on the call for the full legal name and the city, then look that up. Still no names and no work you can look at, treat it as the ghost. A ghost gets no call back. Everything else on this page needs a vendor who actually exists.

The five questions

One thing to know before you dial. A con answer can sound better than the real one. It is smoother and more confident, and it guarantees more than anyone can honestly promise. The real answer is plainer. It admits at least one thing they cannot promise, and it survives being written down. Trust the plain answer over the polished one. The counting rule, so you never wonder mid-call: a vague answer gets the dodge line below it, exactly once — a second dodge anywhere in the five, and you walk. Each bad answer has a name, because a move you can name is a move you can end a call over.

Question 1: "If we stop working together, what exactly do I own, and will you put that in writing?"

Name all four things when you ask: the website, the domain (your web address), the phone number, and the reviews.

Why it works. The worst stories in this trade are not about ugly websites. They are about owners who tried to leave and learned the site, the address, the number, and the reviews were never theirs. When your web guy vanishes shows what that looks like from the inside. This question forces the ownership answer out before any money moves.

A good answer sounds like: a flat yes, on paper. Some vendors publish it before you even ask. One agency states it right on its pricing page: "You own your website 100%". That is the shape of the answer when a vendor means it.

A bad answer sounds like: "It's all built on our proprietary system." That is the platform trap. Proprietary means their system — your site cannot leave with you, so every month you stay is a month of hostage rent. Where that road ends is preserved in a federal court record, walked through at how to read a proposal.

If they dodge: "Write into the contract that the site, the domain, the phone number, and the reviews are mine the day I stop paying. Yes or no."

Question 2: "What is the flat price, all-in? Where is it published?"

Why it works. Much of this trade runs on price fog, meaning nobody names a number until they have measured how much you might pay. A vendor with a real price does not need to know your budget before saying it. (Fair note: genuinely custom scope — page counts, service areas — can need a scoping conversation before a final number. The tell isn't the conversation; it's asking your budget before naming any number at all, even a published starting price.)

A good answer sounds like: a number, in writing, before any meeting. The total and the monthly, with what each dollar buys.

A bad answer sounds like: "every business is different, let's hop on a call and build your custom quote." That is the sizing call: a call where the only custom thing being measured is how much you might pay.

Whether the number is fair for your trade and your town is a separate job, and it lives at what things actually cost. This question only tests whether they will say the number plainly.

If they dodge: "I am not asking whether it's worth it yet. I am asking what it costs. What is the number?"

Question 3: "How do I leave? Show me the walk-away terms before I give you a card number."

Why it works. The documented trap is a sequence: pitch first, card number second, fine print third. Angi publishes its own: cancel early and it charges 35 percent of the unused value left on the membership. Two contractors in one thread put real numbers on it — one thought it was 30 percent of what was left on a twelve-month term, the other was charged 35 percent the day he cancelled. One published rate and two owner accounts still are not the rate that will bill you. The only percentage that does that is the one in your own contract, which is why you read that clause before a card number moves. The stories and the math frame are at how to read a proposal. The order of operations is the con. This question reverses it.

A good answer sounds like: the cancellation terms, in the contract, in plain words, shown to you before any payment information changes hands. Month-to-month that is actually month-to-month on the paper.

A bad answer sounds like: "we'll go over all that once we get you set up." Just as bad: a verbal "no contract, cancel anytime" that appears nowhere on the page. That is the buried term — month-to-month said out loud, twelve months in the paper.

If they dodge: "Email me the exact cancellation clause today. I read it before you get a card number." (If someone else runs your inbox, say so on the call — "email it, my office reads it this week" — the delay is normal and the demand still lands.)

Question 4: "Who exactly does the work? Give me a name and a direct way to reach them."

Why it works. When burned owners wrote their own hiring terms, "a named human who answers" made the list. When something breaks, you need a person whose actual phone rings, not a brand.

A good answer sounds like: a person's name, what that person does on your account, and a direct way to reach them. Ask the follow-up too: "how long has that person been with you?"

A bad answer sounds like: "you'll have a dedicated account team." That is the team shuffle: a rotating cast, a ticket queue, a different voice every call, and no individual name ever offered — so no one is ever the person who owes you an answer.

If they dodge: "If my site goes down on a Friday afternoon, whose phone rings? Name the person."

Question 5: "How will I know it's working? Will you report calls and jobs, or impressions?"

Why it works. The move is a monthly dashboard full of impressions (the count of times a page merely appeared on someone's screen), clicks, reach, and rankings, while the phone stays quiet. Call it report theater. When burned owners set their own terms, "report in calls and jobs, never impressions" was one of them. Only one of those numbers pays your crew.

A good answer sounds like: a commitment, on paper, to report the phone calls that came in and where they came from, with a way for you to check the count yourself instead of taking their word for it. And an honest answer about pace: the early reports should show the work being done, the later ones should show the phone moving.

A bad answer sounds like: a tour of a dashboard. That is report theater: impressions up, clicks up, reach up, rankings up, and no line anywhere connecting any of it to a phone that rang.

If they dodge: "Will your monthly report tell me how many calls came in? Yes or no."

One more note on the "month-to-month, cancel anytime" pitch: it has to survive Question 3. The walk-away terms sit in the contract, in writing, before any card number moves. If the paper says 12 months, the paper wins over the pitch.

When the email never comes. A common answer to "put it in writing" is not a refusal — it is "absolutely, sending it over," and then nothing lands. Paper is boring and sales guys are busy, so silence is not proof he is a crook. It still counts, because the writing was the whole point. Give it two business days, send one line — "Still need those terms in writing" — and if the week ends quiet, mark it a dodge on the sheet.

If they refuse to answer

What this page does not do

Two jobs live elsewhere. Whether a quoted price is fair for your trade and your town: what things actually cost. How to read the actual proposal or contract, line by line, once one lands in your inbox: how to read a proposal.

Run the five questions first. Even when a vendor passes all five, the paper still gets read before anything gets signed.

Too broke to hire anyone yet? Pocket the list anyway — it's free armor for the day the first real quote shows up, and knowing it changes how you hear every pitch before then. And if the only vendor in your county is the honest-but-informal guy who fails Question 2 and Question 5 — no published price, no formal reports — the middle path is making the missing answers part of the deal: "write me the price and the walk-away terms in an email, and text me the month's calls count." An honest one-man shop says yes to that — and may still be slow to send it, because he is on a roof, not at a desk. Slow is not dodging — give this one a week rather than the two days above. Nothing but more talking after that is your answer.

Print this: the five-question call sheet

No printer, no shop counter? Screenshot the sheet — it lives in your pocket the same as the calls do.